


If We're Not Here

by imogenbynight



Series: Odds and Ends [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, LIKE A LOT OF ANGST, M/M, if you were hurt by 9.03 maybe avoid this fic for a while is all i'm saying, post 8.23, when i say angst i mean IT IS NOT A HAPPY ENDING, writing this caused me physical pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 09:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first month after the angels fell Dean was a caged tiger, pacing the halls. Sam watched him warily until he couldn’t stand it any more, and halfway through June, he tracked down a hunt.</p><p>It wasn’t anything big—just a haunting in Topeka that would take them two days, tops—but it was something to focus on, something they could actually do, and he hadn’t waited for a reaction after slapping the newspaper down on the table. Just picked up the keys and told Dean that he was going to start loading the car.</p><p>Before they left, Dean had paused to tape a note to the door under a plastic slip cover taken from one of his records. It wasn’t addressed to anyone, not officially, but then it didn’t need to be.</p><p>IF WE’RE NOT HERE<br/>CALL 785-555-0128<br/>- D</p>
            </blockquote>





	If We're Not Here

For the first month after the angels fell Dean was a caged tiger, pacing the halls. Sam watched him warily until he couldn’t stand it any more, and halfway through June, he tracked down a hunt.

It wasn’t anything big—just a haunting in Topeka that would take them two days, tops—but it was something to focus on, something they could actually do, and he hadn’t waited for a reaction after slapping the newspaper down on the table. Just picked up the keys and told Dean that he was going to start loading the car.

Before they left, Dean had paused to tape a note to the door under a plastic slip cover taken from one of his records. It wasn’t addressed to anyone, not officially, but then it didn’t need to be.

IF WE’RE NOT HERE  
CALL 785-555-0128  
\- D

He’d shot a warning look at Sam, daring him to say something about it as they walked to the car, but Sam hadn’t spoken a word. He knew, of course. Had known for a long time, maybe before Dean, but it wasn’t something either of them spoke about. That Dean loved Castiel was as natural as oxygen. To point out it’s presence was absurd.

Despite the hopeful buzz, the anxious energy that filled the Impala and then their motel room, there was no call while they were away.

When they got back they only stayed for a week before finding a second hunt in Joplin, Missouri, and the note stayed on the door. The paper yellowed in the sun and the ink slowly leeched down in blue streaks when rain got behind the plastic.

Each time they returned without hearing anything, Sam expected Dean to pull the note down, but in August, when they arrived home from two weeks in Omaha to find the note was peeling away from the metal door in the Kansas summer heat, Dean had taken to it with a thick roll of gaffer tape, pressing down the edges so no more dust or moisture could get inside.

In September, in a hospital waiting room with a broken finger and a concussion, Dean had brought attention to the elephant in the room for the first time since the angels fell.

“I prayed to him,” he said, mumbled through his split lip, and Sam’s eyebrows rose, “When the ghoul had me. I thought I was gonna die and… and I prayed to him.”

“Old habits,” Sam had said, trying for a smile.

“You think he’s alive?”

Sam had tried to find a happy medium between brutal honesty and hopefulness, and realized he didn’t have one. He shrugged, looking at his brother who studiously avoided eye contact.

“I don’t know.”

The attending nurse called for him then, and the conversation, barely out of it’s teething stages, was cut short. Dean never brought it up again. Sam decided not to push.

Some nights Dean would have nightmares, the kind that had him thrashing before he woke with a shout dying on his lips, clutching blindly for his gun, and Sam didn’t say anything about it. Just made an effort to avoid touchy subjects that day.

Other nights he’d have dreams, and those… Those were worse. Sam saw him smiling when he woke from them peacefully, and when the expression flickered and faded at the onset of reality, he’d tactfully look away and pretend he didn’t see.

Now, it’s April, 2014, and eleven months have passed without a word.

They’ve been back on the road for a while this time, working their way through small town hunts while the demons fight amongst themselves over the throne of Hell, and it’s been good. Distracting.

From what Sam can tell (because getting his brother to actually speak is like drawing blood from a stone) Dean is getting better. The nightmares have slowed, the dreams seem less painful, and though he’s far from happy that’s always been kind of a stretch for either of them on a good day.

All Sam knows is that for the last couple of months, Dean hasn’t been drinking so much. There have been no fits of rage, no meltdowns of any kind. He’s still grieving, and maybe he always will be, but lately at least, it’s been a healthy kind of grief.

Which is why tonight, in an alley behind a crowded bar in Colorado, Sam is utterly lost.

Three hours ago they’d finished their hunt—a nest of vampires that’s now nothing but an empty warehouse and a pile of ashes—and headed for a bar near their motel.

For a while they just sat in a booth by the door, polishing off a couple of beers while they shared a plate of hot wings and half-watched the TV. Just under ten minutes ago, Dean left for the bathroom with a plan to hustle some pool when he got back. Five minutes ago there were raised voices and the sound of breaking glass somewhere across the bar. By the time Sam recognized his brother’s voice in the commotion, Dean was being dragged through the bar by a security guard while a tall man spoke to the manager through a bloody nose, pointing between Dean and the bathroom.

Now, the security guard is shoving Dean roughly into the alley out back, and Sam barely restrains himself from getting involved.

“What the hell happened?” he asks, but the guard just goes back inside, and Dean doesn’t say a word.

He’s staggering backward over the asphalt, staring at the door they came through, and the whites of his eyes are wide and glossy. If he can see Sam, he’s not showing it.

“Dean!” Sam shouts, stepping down until they’re face to face, “what’s going on?”

Dean just stares right through him, shrugs off Sam’s hands when they settle on his shoulders, turns and starts walking down the alley. He’s not walking straight, and when he bumps against the wall, he pounds into it with his fist until Sam grabs him by the elbow and forces him to stop.

“Jesus, Dean, stop.”

He’s unresponsive—just staring at the wall, at the blood, the grazed skin clinging to rough brown bricks.

“What happened?”

“Just go.”

His voice is somewhere between a snarl and a whisper. It makes Sam’s blood run cold.

“Are you okay?”

Dean just looks away, shakes his head, tight-lipped and jaw-twitching.

“I’m not leaving you here,” Sam tells him.

“Just go,” Dean repeats.

The manager is watching from the doorway, a cell phone in his hand, and he’s waiting, Sam knows, for any sign of trouble.

“He’s fine,” Sam tells him, holding up his hands and trying to sound as calm as possible, “I’m handling it.”

The manager stares at him in the late night dark, in the alley that stinks of piss and half-rotten trash, and doesn’t move. Just watches. Waits. Time stretches on and on until finally the manager leaves, the bar’s back door closing after him with a thunk.

Dean kicks a bottle and it tinkles over the asphalt before it hits the wall and shatters, and he drops down onto his haunches, his head in his hands.

Sam has seen his brother cry before.

In their line of work, it happens once in a while when things get to be too much—but it’s usually just an incidental tear or two shed in the midst of a life or death situation. This is different. A bar brawl is nothing. A bar brawl that he arguably won, considering the other guy’s busted nose is the only clear injury, is even less than nothing.

But Dean is crying now. Silent, tears streaming, and his mouth is hanging half-open as he stares at the ground, at the wall, anywhere but his brother.

“Dean—”

“Go.”

“I—”

“Sammy,” Dean forces the word out and his voice is brittle, shaking, “please.”

“I’m not leaving.”

Dean doesn’t answer again, just presses his hands harder against his eyes, his face, as though he can hold it all in, and Sam hovers beside him with no idea what to do. He’s so focused on his brother that he doesn’t hear the door opening behind him, and when he hears the voice behind him, he flinches just as much as Dean does.

“Hello, Sam.”

There’s no mistaking it, but he still turns half-expecting to find some someone else standing there. The guy with the nosebleed. The security guard. Not Castiel. Not Castiel in a strangers clothes with a button at his chest that reads STAFF and an unlit cigarette turning between nervous fingers.

He might have addressed Sam, but he’s not looking at him. His gaze is fixed, as always, firmly on Dean. Dean, who hasn’t moved, hasn’t taken his hands away from his face.

Castiel walks across the alley past Sam and sinks down onto the ground in front of Dean. Gently, he pulls at his right hand, checking over the bloody knuckle.

“What did you do?” he asks Dean quietly, and Dean pulls his hand back.

Castiel sighs.

“How long?” Dean asks, and Sam guesses this is a conversation he missed the beginning of.

Castiel looks away, hesitating before he answers.

“Just under seven months.”

Dean huffs out a laugh that sounds just on the verge of a sob, and even without the context, Sam wants to punch Castiel on principle.

“Okay then.”

With that, Dean stands and walks away. Down the alley, past the trash cans and the boxes and the flickering bulb over the rolling door of a warehouse. He doesn’t look at Castiel. Doesn’t slow.

Sam stares after him before turning Castiel.

“What happened?”

“A misunderstanding,” Castiel says, looking down to the end of the alley where Dean is rounding the corner, presumably headed back toward the motel, “Dean was upset, Carl thought he was just some drunk, tried to make him leave, things… escalated. Dean punched him.”

“And who the hell is Carl?”

“A friend.”

Castiel shrugs as if to say and that brings us up to speed, but Sam’s pissed. His brother has been grieving for the guy for almost a year, and he’s just been here. In the middle of Colorado, working in a bar and making friends with douchebags named Carl. Not that Carl is necessarily a douchebag, but right now Sam’s inclined to think he is.

“If you give a damn about him—”

“Of course I do. More than—of course I do, Sam. I wanted to find him. Find both of you. But before,” Castiel gestures up toward the sky vaguely, “when Dean and I were tracking that cupid, while you were with Crowley. We spoke about me leaving. For good.”

“And?”

“And he accepted it. When I fell, I thought… I thought it would be better this way. All I do is hurt him, Sam. No matter what I do, no matter my intentions, I always end up hurting him. I suppose this is just further proof,” Castiel shakes his head, “at any rate, he doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Not right now, no, but…” Sam takes a breath, “Cas, he’s had a note stuck to the door of the bunker for the past year. Just in case you turned up when we weren’t there. He wants to talk to you.”

For a few seconds, Castiel just breathes, and Sam watches as his words sink in. But then he’s pulling a lighter from his pocket and flicking it, raising the cigarette to his mouth. It’s wrong, all wrong, and Sam wants to slap it out of his hand.

“What’s the point?” Castiel asks him after a moment, defeated, “we talk, we work things out, I hurt him anyway. I just want him to be happy.”

“And you don’t think maybe you being around would help with that?”

“No, I don’t.”

The tip of the cigarette glows bright in the dark when he takes another drag, and Sam tries to reconcile smoker with everything else he knows about Castiel. Though, for all he knows, this past year has changed everything. He frowns.

“What’s been seven months?” he asks, and Castiel lets out a breath through his nose, crossing one arm over his chest as he looks away.

“Carl,” he says after a pause, and in a spiteful kind of way Sam’s glad he at least looks guilty about it, “he’s been… a source of comfort.”

“So when you said friend—”

“He was, at first.”

“Right.”

“It’s for the best,” Castiel says, though by the sound of his voice he barely believes it, “tell Dean I’m sorry.”

“You know what? Tell him yourself.”

Sam leaves then, walking after his brother to pick up the pieces, and he’s barely gone five paces when the question occurs to him. He knows he shouldn’t ask; it’s really none of his business, and if Dean knew he had he’d kill him, but he’s out of ideas.

“Do you love him?” he asks, looking back.

The expression on Castiel’s face is answer enough, but he shakes his head, looking away.

“Sam, it’s more complicated than that.”

“No, it really isn’t.”

Castiel sighs, staring down the now-empty alley, and drops the cigarette the ground, grinding it out with his toe.

“You’re right,” he says quietly, “how I feel about Dean is the least complicated thing in the world. But that doesn’t mean I should stick around and screw up his life. Goodbye, Sam.”

He’s gone, back inside the bar before Sam can respond, and he stares at the blood on the wall, the ash on the ground, the broken glass.

When he gets back to Dean, he expects more of the same.

They arrive back at the bunker on May 15th, and Dean pulls the note from the door. Sam doesn’t say a word.


End file.
